Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2021 Dec 17;11(6):90-94.
doi: 10.1093/af/vfab060. eCollection 2021 Dec.

Beyond the genome: a perspective on the use of DNA methylation profiles as a tool for the livestock industry

Shannon Clarke  1 , Alex Caulton  1   2 , Kathryn McRae  1 , Rudiger Brauning  1 , Christine Couldrey  3 , Ken Dodds  1
Affiliations
Review

Beyond the genome: a perspective on the use of DNA methylation profiles as a tool for the livestock industry

Shannon Clarke et al. Anim Front. .
No abstract available

Keywords: DNA methylation; epigenetic clock; epigenome; livestock; selection.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Depiction of the use of an epigenetic livestock clock in animal breeding. The black line represents the epigenetic clock established from the training animals (black dots). Animals with a younger biological age (green) compared with those that are estimated to have an older biological age (red) than their true chronological age. Those in blue have an estimated biological age that does not deviate from their true chronological age. In (A), the livestock epigenetic clock is used for early-in-life selection of animals, whereby those estimated to have a younger biological age may be selected with assumption of improved longevity, or the “biological age” could be included in genetic evaluation, to adjust an individual’s performance. In (B), the livestock epigenetic clock is used to measure historical stress, for health and welfare monitoring of animals. .
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Hazard, D., Plisson-Petit F., Moreno-Romieux C., Fabre S., and Drouilhet L.. . 2020. Genetic determinism exists for the global DNA methylation rate in sheep. Front. Genet. 11:616960. doi:10.3389/fgene.2020.616960 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Horvath, S., and Raj K.. . 2018. DNA methylation-based biomarkers and the epigenetic clock theory of ageing. Nat. Rev. Genet. 19:371–384. doi:10.1038/s41576-018-0004-3 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Lamb, H.J., Hayes B.J., L.T.Nguyen, and Ross E.M.. . 2020. The future of livestock management: a review of real-time portable sequencing applied to livestock. Genes (Basel). 11:1478. doi:10.3390/genes11121478 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Li, C.Z., A. Haghani, T.R. Robeck, D. Villar, A.T. Lu, J. Zhang, C.G. Faulkes, H. Vu, J. Ablaeva, D.M. Adams, . et al. 2021. Epigenetic predictors of maximum lifespan and other life history traits in mammals, biorXiv, doi:10.1101/2021.05.16.444078, 18 May 2021, preprint: not peer reviewed - DOI
    1. Li, M., Zou D., Li Z., Gao R., Sang J., Zhang Y., Li R., Xia L., Zhang T., Niu G., . et al. 2019. EWAS Atlas: a curated knowledge base of epigenome-wide association studies. Nucleic Acids Res. 47(D1):D983–D988. doi:10.1093/nar/gky1027 - DOI - PMC - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources